May the forts be with you

With oil set for $200 a barrel and petrol $2 a litre, you might like to see how
your money is being spent. Try Oman. Not the showy glitz of Dubai or the other
shimmering Emirates up the road. Oman is agreeably low-rise and low-key.

Like the Gulf states to its north, Oman offers the usual "Arabian nights"
stopovers: ride a camel, bash a dune and sleep under the stars in a six-star
tent. There are camping and trekking, surfing and diving, and just idling around
the pool at luxury resorts. But beyond all that, there's history; a rich past
colouring a bright future.

You can't miss Oman. Head straight down the eastern side of the Arabian
peninsula and it's the last stop before the Arabian Sea. The sultanate's story
is at once exotic and familiar; the broad strands of Oman's trade and culture
weave into the wider narrative that draws together the ancient world and the
modern, the East and the West.

Oman's trade was once in frankincense, the wise man's Christmas gift of
choice. Now it's oil and gas. But not as much oil and gas as its neighbours, so
Oman is busy adding know-how to resources. The man who decides how the money is
spent is His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos bin Said. My guide, Saif, tells me that
health care is free, school is compulsory and university is not only free but
students are paid to go.

In short, the urbane and cultured sultan is the kind of ruler who gives
absolute monarchy a good name. His work is everywhere. At a lookout high in the
Al Hajar mountains inland from the capital, Muscat, I know I'm supposed to be
admiring that lush grove of date palms near that picturesque abandoned stone
village but my gaze wanders to yet another new school and, beyond it, yet
another new hospital. Of course, I am very susceptible, coming as I do from
Morris Iemma's state, where promises of new this and new that have all the
substance of desert mirages.

Oman's present is every bit as fascinating as its past, a nation refashioned
in the less than four decades since the sultan deposed his backward-looking
father, and set about rebuilding Oman from the sand up. The oft-quoted statistic
is that Sultan Qaboos inherited just 10 kilometres of sealed road - Saif says he
will show it to me - and now there are almost 9000 kilometres, including plenty
of freeways (with, by the way, road signs in English as well as Arabic).

The nation seized by the sultan in 1970 was not just another arbitrary
construct from that conference at Versailles after World War I - not just lines
on a map. Oman has been a nation for centuries - indeed, in some sense, for
millenniums - and for all that time has built forts and watchtowers to protect
itself and guard its trade. Some forts date back to pre-Islamic times, others
are more recent; some are no more than four walls, others are massive, with high
towers and banks of battlements. All have an air of intrigue.

Secret hiding places lead to secret escape tunnels. Intruders were dropped to
their deaths through secret trapdoors or met a truly sticky end, doused with
vats of boiling date syrup. A windowless room at the fort in the former capital,
Nizwa, was for spies to brief their masters without being overheard, while
travelling merchants slept and chatted freely in a nearby guest room with no
idea their every word was overheard through listening holes in the floor hidden
by carpets.

Outside, in the Nizwa market, I am drawn to some dusty old water bags made of
stomachs, but can't decide between the cow's and the camel's.

Despite the drama of their working lives, the forts are serene in retirement
and very beautiful. High adobe walls are bleached to a pale terracotta in the
intense noon sun and warm to a rich copper by late afternoon. Battlements
command broad plains once crisscrossed by camel trails, with views over
silver-green palm groves to distant mountains, mauve and grey in the
sticky-thick dusty haze of summer. But you won't go in summer when the
temperature is in the 40s, that's the high 40s. Unlike me, you'll be sensible
and go when it's cooler and the skies are clear blue and the mountains
sharp-edged.

The restoration of Oman's enormous legacy of forts and watchtowers is a work
in progress; some 250 are done with about the same still to do. Many are already
open to the public and the list grows by the year. Some, such as the fort at
Nizwa, explain themselves well, while others, such as the imposing stronghold at
Nakhal across the mountains near Muscat, have little to inform the traveller.
So, best take a guide.

The forts have been built and rebuilt over the centuries, in a traditional
adobe of mud mixed with crushed stones and palm fibre. The biggest is the
magnificent fort at Bahla, not far west of Nizwa, built before the advent of
Islam. Restoration of its World Heritage-listed walls and towers is still not
finished, despite a decade of painstaking work.

Bahla towers 50 metres over the surrounding town, too high by Oman's current
standards. Sultan Qaboos likes Oman's architecture low-rise and Arab in flavour.
In the new suburbs, more is definitely Moor. More tiles, more columns, more
arches and definitely more battlements. Everything comes with battlements, from
the Grand Hyatt in Muscat to the white plastic water tanks on the roof of the
humblest home.

"Aladdinland," I find myself thinking, as we roar through the 'burbs of
Muscat heading 1000 kilometres south to the city of Salalah, in the Dhofar
region, exchanging date palms and dust for coconut palms waving along wide surf
beaches. In Salalah, high mountains stop just short of the green Arabian Sea. In
the monsoon season - and this is the only part of Arabia washed by monsoons -
the mountains, too, are green. Hawaii with camels. The travel brochures must
write themselves.

We stay at Salalah's exquisitely groomed Crowne Plaza, where the lawns are
not merely manicured but hot waxed and the frangipani wouldn't dare just drop
their blossoms but arrange them neatly on the grass.

As long as 3000 years ago, spice traders hooked the wind and swung into the
lagoon at Al Baleed, an ancient city being slowly uncovered along Salalah's
beachfront. Girls on a school excursion to the site are as noisy as teenagers
anywhere but modestly draw their veils as Saif and I catch up with them on the
path to the adjoining museum, which in just a few galleries tells Oman's story
in artefacts and audiovisuals. From dig to digital.

The Queen of Sheba shopped here - for frankincense to send to King Solomon.
Frankincense is actually dried tree sap. Gold, tree sap and myrrh? Nah.

In the Salalah market, Muna might be an alchemist or a sorcerer, as her hand
reaches out from her long black robe, or abyah, to dance along rows of glass
jars with sparkling gold stoppers. Would she make me a perfume, the sort an
Omani man might wear? Of course but Muna says it will be an everyday aroma, not
one to make me irresistible to women.

Maybe that's why it is a surprising greeny black in colour. The little vial
looks like essence of bitumen and is piquant in a rather industrial kind of way.
Eau de Bloke, perhaps. The formula is lost in translation. Something from a
whale, probably ambergris, but no one is sure, and something from India for
which there is, apparently, no word in English, plus there's saffron and,
alarmingly, something distilled from cabbage.

Powerfully aromatic, we head for the desert north-west of Salalah and the
ruins of the lost city of Ubar, pinpointed not so long ago by an observant
satellite.

It sounds wonderfully romantic. This may prove to be the place dubbed the
"Atlantis of the Sands" by T. E. Lawrence, he of Arabia. It could be the
fabulously rich and decadent trading city, which the Koran says was destroyed
for its wickedness when God picked it up and turned it upside down in the sand.
Certainly some cataclysm appears to have claimed Ubar, as the ruins have an
enormous hole right in the middle.

Heading back the 170 kilometres to Salalah, half of it on dirt road, Saif
is preparing to write a strong letter to the Ministry of Tourism, while from one
of his eclectic music self-compilations, Kansas is playing Dust In The Wind.

Secret hiding places lead to secret escape tunnels. Intruders were
dropped to their deaths through secret trapdoors or met a truly sticky end,
doused with vats of boiling date syrup. A windowless room at the fort in the
former capital, Nizwa, was for spies to brief their masters without being
overheard, while travelling merchants slept and chatted freely in a nearby guest
room with no idea their every word was overheard through listening holes in the
floor hidden by carpets.

Outside, in the Nizwa market, I am drawn to some dusty old water bags made of
stomachs, but can't decide between the cow's and the camel's.

Despite the drama of their working lives, the forts are serene in retirement
and very beautiful. High adobe walls are bleached to a pale terracotta in the
intense noon sun and warm to a rich copper by late afternoon. Battlements
command broad plains once crisscrossed by camel trails, with views over
silver-green palm groves to distant mountains, mauve and grey in the
sticky-thick dusty haze of summer. But you won't go in summer when the
temperature is in the 40s, that's the high 40s. Unlike me, you'll be sensible
and go when it's cooler and the skies are clear blue and the mountains
sharp-edged.

The restoration of Oman's enormous legacy of forts and watchtowers is a work
in progress; some 250 are done with about the same still to do. Many are already
open to the public and the list grows by the year. Some, such as the fort at
Nizwa, explain themselves well, while others, such as the imposing stronghold at
Nakhal across the mountains near Muscat, have little to inform the traveller.
So, best take a guide.

The forts have been built and rebuilt over the centuries, in a traditional
adobe of mud mixed with crushed stones and palm fibre. The biggest is the
magnificent fort at Bahla, not far west of Nizwa, built before the advent of
Islam. Restoration of its World Heritage-listed walls and towers is still not
finished, despite a decade of painstaking work.

Bahla towers 50 metres over the surrounding town, too high by Oman's current
standards. Sultan Qaboos likes Oman's architecture low-rise and Arab in flavour.
In the new suburbs, more is definitely Moor. More tiles, more columns, more
arches and definitely more battlements. Everything comes with battlements, from
the Grand Hyatt in Muscat to the white plastic water tanks on the roof of the
humblest home.

"Aladdinland," I find myself thinking, as we roar through the 'burbs of
Muscat heading 1000 kilometres south to the city of Salalah, in the Dhofar
region, exchanging date palms and dust for coconut palms waving along wide surf
beaches. In Salalah, high mountains stop just short of the green Arabian Sea. In
the monsoon season - and this is the only part of Arabia washed by monsoons -
the mountains, too, are green. Hawaii with camels. The travel brochures must
write themselves.

We stay at Salalah's exquisitely groomed Crowne Plaza, where the lawns are
not merely manicured but hot waxed and the frangipani wouldn't dare just drop
their blossoms but arrange them neatly on the grass.

As long as 3000 years ago, spice traders hooked the wind and swung into the
lagoon at Al Baleed, an ancient city being slowly uncovered along Salalah's
beachfront. Girls on a school excursion to the site are as noisy as teenagers
anywhere but modestly draw their veils as Saif and I catch up with them on the
path to the adjoining museum, which in just a few galleries tells Oman's story
in artefacts and audiovisuals. From dig to digital.

The Queen of Sheba shopped here - for frankincense to send to King Solomon.
Frankincense is actually dried tree sap. Gold, tree sap and myrrh? Nah.

In the Salalah market, Muna might be an alchemist or a sorcerer, as her hand
reaches out from her long black robe, or abyah, to dance along rows of glass
jars with sparkling gold stoppers. Would she make me a perfume, the sort an
Omani man might wear? Of course but Muna says it will be an everyday aroma, not
one to make me irresistible to women.

Maybe that's why it is a surprising greeny black in colour. The little vial
looks like essence of bitumen and is piquant in a rather industrial kind of way.
Eau de Bloke, perhaps. The formula is lost in translation. Something from a
whale, probably ambergris, but no one is sure, and something from India for
which there is, apparently, no word in English, plus there's saffron and,
alarmingly, something distilled from cabbage.

Powerfully aromatic, we head for the desert north-west of Salalah and the
ruins of the lost city of Ubar, pinpointed not so long ago by an observant
satellite.

It sounds wonderfully romantic. This may prove to be the place dubbed the
"Atlantis of the Sands" by T. E. Lawrence, he of Arabia. It could be the
fabulously rich and decadent trading city, which the Koran says was destroyed
for its wickedness when God picked it up and turned it upside down in the sand.
Certainly some cataclysm appears to have claimed Ubar, as the ruins have an
enormous hole right in the middle.

Sadly, the city's punishment continues to this day: rubbish skips around in
the wind; there are only the most basic signs to interpret the ruins; and the
"museum" consists of a few sad exhibits in a dingy little plywood shed. What a
disappointment.

Heading back the 170 kilometres to Salalah, half of it on dirt road, Saif is
preparing to write a strong letter to the Ministry of Tourism, while from one of
his eclectic music self-compilations, Kansas is playing Dust In The Wind.

Getting thereThai Airways flies to Muscat from Melbourne
and Sydney for $1448, with an aircraft change in Bangkok. Etihad has a fare from
Sydney for $1650 with an aircraft change in Abu Dhabi; Melbourne passengers pay
$1925 and fly Qantas to Sydney. (Fares are low-season return and do not include
tax.) Australian passport holders require a visa for a stay up to 30 days, which
can be obtained in Australia for $42 or upon arrival for six Omani rials.